


The Easier Way

by brook456



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Forduary, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9996326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brook456/pseuds/brook456
Summary: Stanford Pines makes it through life by telling himself one lie.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another quick angsty oneshot for Forduary, this time for the family prompt. It's supposed to be about pre-portal Ford in case that isn't clear. As usual it's a weird rambling character study with plenty of stangst and emdashes (though less emdashes than usual, I think).
> 
> Canon Typical Violence is marked because there is a brief mention of Stan getting kicked into that hot component during ToTS.
> 
> ((also no I have not forgotten about working on Trolley Tracks it's just I had to get this in before the end of February and I've only gotten the chance to write once for the last couple of weeks))

It was, perhaps, easier to hate him. Easier to blame him for everything, to think on him with nothing but anger and resentment. To recall only his betrayal, his insistence on his own dreams, his disregard of the dreams of others. To remember his selfishness, and his want of his brother for himself. How it drove him to do terrible things.

Oh it was easier to hate him, for hating gave Ford a sense of righteous anger, the ability to curse the world for holding him back, to say he had been wronged, to prove himself the injured party. To blame his failures on someone other than himself, to justify what he had let happen. Karma, he would think to himself—and he was almost convinced of it. Karma for betrayal. Karma for greed. His brother had gotten what he deserved.

Of course, Ford only believed this when he thought on it. Denial was his real goal, even more ideal than hating—forgetting about him meant no scars, and so he took measures to convince himself that his brother had never existed. He liked to tell others he was an only child, because wouldn’t have it been easier if it was true? After all, it was not really a lie, disowned was disowned, disowned was never born. Was absorbed in the womb with no trace but two extra fingers on his brother’s hand—Ford said that once, when pressed, that he was what he was because he had lost a brother. And it was not quite a lie.

Not lying, that’s what he told himself. He rationalized his falsehoods to others, and buried the falsehoods he told to himself. Because, after all, even if he _did_ hate Stanley, he didn’t _only_ hate him. This, of course, he would never admit. He might not believe his claims that he was an only child—forgetting, in the end, was too much a stretch even for him, he could never quite lose himself far enough in his books and classes—but he could believe that he hated him, and _only_ hated him.

Why? It was a stretch too, to tell himself he didn’t love his brother when they had spent so much time as friends, stood by each other no matter what—well almost no matter what, _almost_. But to say he didn’t even care—now there was a lie, not even a half-lie either, but an utter falsehood. And yet it was the one lie he managed to swallow whole, to convince himself of entirely—he never dreamed he loved him until he had burned him across the back and felt his heart break at his screams.

No, he said he didn’t love him because hating was easier. To say he loved him was to spend his nights awake, to scan every channel for each infomercial, to fear each time nothing could be found. To wonder with every meal if he had eaten, to count the days and never know if today was his last. Easier to assuage your fears by saying he deserved it, yes, but there was more to hating than even that—what did it mean to Ford if his brother was not loathable? If Stan had not been entirely and completely terrible—then what? If only he had really been the monster Ford convinced himself he was, it would have been so much easier.

Because…if there was anything redeeming about him, anything at all, Ford could not live with it. He could not sit there and study and gather degrees and chase his fame if he thought for a moment that he had been wrong, that when he saw his brother in the street and had turned away it had not been justified. What then, if it wasn’t? What then if the nagging feeling that Stan would never have broken his project, the nagging feeling that he pushed so far away from himself that he would have never recalled having it, was true? Or worse, even if he had been guilty, he had not been so guilty as to merit _that_? Who was Ford then, and what had he done? Nothing but everything he told himself he loathed about Stan, and then…

No, he had to hate him. He had to hate him because otherwise he had let him suffer unjustly, otherwise he would spend his life knowing that his brother was in pain—in pain because of him, no less—and suffer for it. To realize he had lost everything he had ever cared about and never love himself again, because he could never love himself if he loved him.

And so, it was easier to hate him.


End file.
